In Winston It’s “Where’s Your Church?”

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One of the most aggravating things about going to parties and such in Northern Virginia was that the first question anyone asked you was "So what do you do?" and then you could see them compartmentalize you after you answered (if they listened at all). With a lot of them if you were perceived to be below their status or of little future use then they tried to move on to someone else.

Brad Feld has a great answer for that most annoying of questions, and it got me to thinking about one of the first things I noticed when we moved to Winston-Salem two years ago.  Instead of asking you what you do most people here ask you "Where’s your church?"  I think they also compartmentalize you based on your answer, but I honestly think the motivation is to see if you have a church and if you don’t to invite you to theirs. 

The result is that I don’t know what half the people here do for a living but I do know there’s a bunch of Methodists and Baptists running around.  Kind of nice.

My Dell Laptop Gets Hot, But Not This Hot…Yet

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Dell_banger1
I’ve had my Dell laptop for about 3 1/2 years and until about three
months ago it was my everyday computer.  It always ran a little hot and
the fan made a hell of a racket, but otherwise it performed pretty
well.  Then it started acting hinky and I decided to get a desktop and
only use it when I was on the road for extended periods of time.

I came across this story about a Dell laptop that exploded and now I’m thinking I might need to unload the thing altogether.  Scary.

Somebody at UVA is Having Fun at Ann Coulter’s Expense

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Someone at UVA put up this “Hitler vs. Coulter Quiz” and I’m not sure if it’s funny or creepy or both. Someone needs to give that woman an island on which she can roar to her hearts delight and stop bothering the rest of us.  She could also use a couple of slices of bread since she kind of looks like a pissed off Q-Tip these days.

Politician Puts Foot In Mouth, the Definition of Unsurprising

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A congressman from Iowa stuck his foot in his mouth when he said the following:

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, was discussing the June 7 death of terrorist leader Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi on Saturday when he mentioned 85-year-old Helen Thomas, who has covered the White House for nearly 50 years and is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.

"There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell he’s at," King said about al-Zarqawi, in a recording transcribed by Radio Iowa. "And if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas."

Oops.

700 Miles in Two Days Leads to Random Thoughts

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I drove back up to DC on Monday night for a meeting yesterday and then drove back last night.  That’s about 10 hours of driving that eventually led to a lot of random thoughts from my AD-dled mind.  Among them:

  • There’s a sign on I-95 south that says ‘Leaving Highway Safety Zone."  What the hell does that mean?  Am I entering a "Highway Death and Dismemberment Zone?"
  • High gas prices have led the highways to look to me like 1978 all over again.  That was the year my Mom bought the original Honda Civic (it replaced our decrepit Ford Pinto…you know the Ford that exploded when rear-ended as opposed to the Ford that rolled over) and I can remember driving to NC to visit my grandparents and feeling like we could drive under the 18-wheelers if we wanted to.  I also remember unintentional lane changes due to wind gusts which made the drive fairly entertaining.  Well on my drives this week I saw many cars that looked remarkably like the old Civics and made my little Saturn look like a limo by comparison.  I hope to god the drivers of those things hit nothing bigger than a squirrel because if they do they lose.
  • If I’m going to be doing these long drives more often (quite likely since air fares have about tripled in the last month or two) I might need a bigger car.  My Saturn gets great mileage but I can’t fully extend my legs and after an hour or two I feel like someone has poured cement into my leg joints.  I could live with it before, but my body has discovered it’s 40 and is screaming at every little disservice I present it.
  • Having an AD-dled mind sucks.  In the span of 10 miles something reminded me of someone I forgot to reimburse in college for tickets to a concert (Billy Joel I think) and I wondered if I could find her to get her the money. Then I wondered if I was the world’s greatest underachiever at the age of 40…I mean what have I done that anyone will remember even before I die, much less after?  Then I wondered why I was trying to hold in a fart even though no one could possibly smell it, except perhaps my lovely wife who can seriously smell them from miles away.  Seconds later I was wondering why skunks constantly run onto highways and get hit other than to give me cover to fart.  Then I thought about how I’ve been playing tennis for much of my life but I still suck at it and that got me thinking why I always think so negatively.  Am I a manic depressive?  Well, no I’m probably just hungry since I usually get down or pissed-off only when I’m hungry, or around brats, or both.  Wow, I’ve gone 10 miles…where the hell am I and I wonder if I should stop to get something to eat?
  • I’ve made this drive between DC and NC countless times over the last couple of years yet I’ve never passed, or been passed, by a hot woman driving in a convertible but I’ve seen hundreds of fat middle-aged men in convertibles.  That’s not fair, although I will say it’s fairly entertaining to see a guys comb-over flowing behind him at 70 mph.
  • XM Radio is a god-send.  I was able to listen to game 7 of the
    Stanley Cup finals on the trip north and game 6 of the NBA finals on
    the trip south.  And I didn’t have to suffer through the radio abyss
    that is I-85 between Petersburg, VA and Durham, NC.  And since I’m not
    enough of an audiophile to have a good MP3 collection that abyss is
    horrible without the satellite.
  • Hockey is hard to listen to when you don’t know much about it.  I
    was cheering for the Carolina Hurricanes but found I ended up
    inadvertently cheering for the Edmonton Oilers every once in a while
    when I misidentified a player/team relationship.  Still it was exciting.
  • The NBA sucks.  I know all the players, am a huge basketball fan,
    had a rooting interest in the game (Josh Howard of the Mavericks went
    to Wake Forest) and yet I yawned for much of the game.  I used to love
    the NBA playoffs, but for some reason these days I find it about as
    compelling to watch as a Spelling Bee.

I Know One of People’s Hottest Bachelor’s for 2006

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 You may need to use a people search engine in order to find whoever you are looking for, unless you’re at a college with a directory of people who are employees.
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Archie_kaoThat guy to the left is Archie Kao who was in my fraternity (Sigma Chi at George Mason University) back in the day.  Archie was a great guy to know in school for many reasons including the fact that he was an absolute "chick magnet."  He and a bunch of the other guys in the fraternity helped us put on some of the best parties on campus in terms of the women in attendance, which didn’t hurt when rush season came around.  Archie was also president of the student government and a great guy in general.

Now he’s been selected as one of People Magazine’s hottest bachelors for 2006.  That selection helped him end up on the Today show earlier this week as part of a very, uh, interesting "dating game" bit with Al Roker.  Despite the decidedly "in touch with his feminine side" slant of the quotes attributed to Archie he has yet to catch the ration of s*** I’d expect from all our fraternity alums who participate in email exchanges, but I expect that to change.  Or maybe not: I think most of us who are married with children and rapidly entering middle age are probably just a little bit in awe of Archie’s continued success in the bachelorhood field.

If you know a fine lady who likes daytime activities (Archie: "I like daytime activities. On one date we played tennis, then went to
a museum. Another girl took me sea kayaking. It was amazing.") and has "Oprah-esque qualities" point her Archie’s way.  Help bring him over to the new fraternity of marital obligation and parental oblivion.